


I Bargained for Salvation (I Got a Lethal Dose)

by ghostwriterofthemachine



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Angst, Burns, Isolation, M/M, Permanent Injury, Scars, Self-Hatred, Spies & Secret Agents, Violence, burn scars, in which I drown Connor McDavid in angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-21
Updated: 2018-06-21
Packaged: 2019-05-26 14:10:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,683
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15002534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ghostwriterofthemachine/pseuds/ghostwriterofthemachine
Summary: Connor McDavid dies.Stop. Stop. That isn’t how the story goes.





	I Bargained for Salvation (I Got a Lethal Dose)

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [safe as houses](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14883485) by [theundiagnosable](https://archiveofourown.org/users/theundiagnosable/pseuds/theundiagnosable). 



> Guys. I have no idea how I got here.
> 
> I've been resisting writing in this fandom for a while now because, even thought the fics are awesome, from what I've seen there's a lot of trolls and negativity and IRL drama leak, and fanfiction is my escape from all of those things. Even this summer, when I gave in and accepted that I was going to write about stupid hockey players, this wasn't what I was planning on putting out at all. 
> 
> But than I read [theundiagnosable's](https://archiveofourown.org/users/theundiagnosable/pseuds/theundiagnosable) amazing work [safe as houses](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14883485), and this idea roared into my head and wouldn't leave until I got it all down. And so I got it all down. 
> 
> **Warnings** for descriptions of burns, burn scars,body image issues based on those scars, and permanent Injury; though I don't think any of these are too graphic. Let me know if any of the tags need to be stronger. 
> 
> There's some very hand wave-y medical science here, too. Please forgive my 20-minuet research job. Title from Bob Dylan's "Shelter from the Storm."
> 
> So thanks, [theundiagnosable](https://archiveofourown.org/users/theundiagnosable/pseuds/theundiagnosable), for letting me play in your sandbox. Hope I didn't ruin your vision.

Connor McDavid dies a heroes death. 

 

_ No, that’s not right.  _

 

~~ Connor McDavid dies a heroes death.  ~~

 

Connor McDavid dies in a a wrong-place-wrong-time explosion, a mission gone wrong.

 

_ No, no, that’s not right either.  _

 

~~ Connor McDavid dies a heroes death.  ~~

 

~~ Connor McDavid dies in a a wrong-place-wrong-time explosion, a mission gone wrong. ~~

 

~~ Connor McDavid dies alone and in pain and terrified. ~~

 

~~ Connor McDavid dies because he was a trusting, naive child who believed his boss was a good person. ~~

 

~~ Connor McDavid dies without seeing either one of his best friends again, without ever saying how much he loved the both of them. ~~

 

~~ Connor McDavid dies burning. ~~

 

~~ Connor McDavid dies pointlessly. ~~

 

Connor McDavid dies. 

 

_ Stop. Stop. That isn’t how the story goes.  _

 

Connor McDavid dies the moment a man in a suit walks up to a teenaged him, and asks if he wants to help save the world. 

 

_ Maybe. Maybe that’s getting closer.  _

 

.

 

Heat sweeps over him and rubble buries him. 

 

It hurts, of course it hurts, it hurts with the sudden, special kind of pain that only burns ever really give you. A deep, stinging agony, low and roaring, defining and constant. For who-knows-how-many seconds, he can only think about the pain.

 

Then Connor hears voices, getting closer and closer. And in that moment there’s bliss, because he’s so, so sure that it’s Dylan and Mitch, here with cool hands and medical supplies, to bundle him away someplace safe and make the pain go away. 

 

It isn’t Dylan and Mitch. 

 

(Of course not, he realizes later. Of course not. The warehouse was empty.

 

He knows what that means.)

 

.

 

The problem isn’t that they hurt him. They don’t have to, really— the fire already did that for them. 

 

The problem is that they leave him. 

 

They hurt him a little bit, of course. With fists and probing fingers on his flayed skin. Connor doesn’t even have the energy to cry out from it. He just gulps down ragged, gagged inhales instead of screaming. 

 

But they don’t hurt him long. The hurting isn’t the point. They don’t ask him any questions, then they take him and throw him somewhere dark.

 

Dark, cold, vaguely metallic. 

 

And they leave him. 

 

Connor doesn’t know how long he lays there, floating in and out of consciousness in that cold place, in so much pain he almost doesn’t feel it.  His ruined body trying and trying to knit itself back together and maybe trapping some of the dark and cold inside him when as it did. 

 

4 days, he later finds out. 

 

Connor knows he is going to die. He can’t even find it in himself to be angry about it. Sad, maybe. That he won’t see his family ever again, that he’s leaving Dylan and Mich alone. 

 

At least they’re safe. He’s done that much. He hasn’t totally failed. 

 

And that would have been the thought that carried him off to death, except that then there’s a clang of a door being kicked down, and what Connor could swear was vicious Russian swearing. 

 

Conor shuts his eyes, and doesn't know anything. 

 

.

 

He opens his eyes. He’s floating in a haze of probably-painkillers. He can hear more Russian shouting, and he’s too out of it to translate it. Then, in English, accented and sharp. 

 

“No, I’m not leave him there, look at him, he’s  _ baby _ . I don’t care. I don’t care! We better than them. We not leave babies to die.” 

 

It’s all a little too much. But no one is hurting him, and he isn’t cold, and he can’t feel the burns all over his body. Conner lets the probably-painkillers take him under again. 

 

.

 

The next time he wakes up, there’s a man with blond hair and a murder face looking down at him. Conor has a feeding tube in his mouth and nearly has a panic attack. 

 

“Relax,” the man said, brisk and assertive, and Connor does without thinking. “I’m going to take it out. You’re fine. Just breath.”

 

This man also has an accent. Not Russian, though. He takes the feeding tube out of Connor’s throat.

 

“What happened?” Connor can’t believe that wrecked voice is his. 

 

“You have extensive second-and-third degree burns all over your left side. You got an infection because of the condition you were kept in, and you were starving, and dehydrated. I spent the better part of four days pulling you from death’s door.”

 

Connor turns his head and looks at his bandage-covered side. It’s a field of snowy-white gauze. “No, I mean, what happened with—where am—”

 

“That’s not for me to tell you,” the blond man says. “But don’t worry. You’re going to find out soon. You’re safe,” he adds, expression softening when he sees Connor’s face. “I promise you’re safe, for now.”

 

.

 

Two very different Russians sit in front of Connor. 

 

One is almost too angular, his nose straight and strong like marble under a heavy browline. The other has a droopy, deceptively sleepy face, the rest of him long-limbed and tousled. The one with better English introduces himself as Alex and the other as Zhenya, to which Zhenya rolls his eyes and corrects him to Geno. 

 

Connor stares at them and blinks and feels the ache of his burns through the bandages and the painkillers. 

 

“Do you know what happened to you?” Alex asks. 

 

“I was set up, ” Connor says, because he knows that. “I don’t understand. Why was I set up? Who are you?” 

 

The two men glance at each other. Geno sighs and Alex opens his mouth to speak. 

 

And Connor finds out just how fucking terrible Gary Bettman is. And how fucked he, Connor, is. How close he was to pulling Dylan and Mitch down with him. 

 

Dylan and Mitch. Dylan and Mitch. _ Dylan and Mitch _ . 

 

“I need,” Connor choked out. He nearly gagged on his tongue. “My team, I need—oh, god, fuck, they think I’m—I need to tell them I’m not, I’ve been gone for—I need to tell them about—”

 

Then he stops, because Alex and Geno are looking at him like he’s the saddest story they’ve ever heard. 

 

Connor is going to get a lot of that, over the next few years. 

 

.

 

The blond doctor with the scary face has a name, and it’s Nicke.  Connor watches him unwrap the bandages around his arm and side and leg. 

 

The burns are warped and pink, like chewed bubble gum globbed on his skin. 

 

“Move your hand, please,” Nicke says, “Flex your fingers, make a fist,” and Connor does. His face twists as the skin of his fingers pull. 

 

He feels so, so far away from his body. 

 

“You’re probably going to have some mobility issues, from the scar tissue,” Nicke begins to prepare new bandages. “Problems with your grip. And almost definitely sensory issues, but only in a few places. Is this your dominant hand?”

 

Connor shook his head in the negative. 

 

Nicke hummed. “The pain might completely go away, it might not. We can’t be sure yet. But it will dull.” He pauses, then adds, “The scarring will stay, of course.”

 

Of course.

 

.

 

The network of spies, burnt or targeted by the organization and deep in hiding, is fairly small, spread out geographically, and tight-knit in every other way. Connor is at a safehouse run by Alex, who was the first casualty in an anti-Russian purge Bettman and someone close to him went on a few years back. He and half his team nearly died in it. 

 

All Connor can do was stare at the wall across from his bed, unmoving and blank. Feel the ache as his burns tried to heal. Think about how Mitch will look when he cries and cries and cries, the way Dylan will shut down, because not even Mitch can stop his from doing that. Only Connor can.

 

“You be okay, you know?”

 

Connor tears his eyes away from the whitewash, moves them to the door. Geno has folded his long limbs onto the door jam, and he’s staring at Connor with droopy eyes. 

 

“You the best, right? One of the best?”

 

Connor shrugs his good shoulder. “I was supposed to be. They kept saying I would be.”

 

“Then you bounce back.” Geno returns the shrug with the air of someone who desperately wished he could be understood without speaking. “From hurts, from betrayals. My partner and I, we leave because we—well, not quite set up, but close. Partner has history of concussions, man in suit gives him new headgear, says ‘here, try this, will help.’ We try it, and next time he get hit in the head—” Geno shrugs again. 

 

“It didn’t help?”

 

Geno says, “It blind him,” as if he’s had to say it many, many times. “Like concussion, but worse. Can’t look at any light, can’t read anything, can’t use eyes.” 

 

Connor says, “Oh.”

 

“But we move on,” Geno continues, with a stubborn set to his mouth. “He learns and he relearns, he improves. He heals, even though there are ways he can never heal. You know, he still can hit target with gun? Can do some things he wasn’t able to do before, too.” He gestures at Connor, sitting in the bed. “You bounce back too.”

 

And Connor knows that he’s trying to help, knows that he’s trying to be comforting, but all he can do is stare at the man in the doorway and say, “He had you though, didn’t he?” and pull the covers up over his head. 

 

_ Who do I have? _ He doesn’t say. No one, was the answer. Dead people didn’t have anyone. 

 

.

 

It takes almost a year for him to recover from the explosion. A year of antibiotics and cleanrooms and scowling Nicke and a stoic-faced guy who acts like a physical therapist named Tavares. 

 

At the end of it, he stands in front of a mirror in only boxers and stares at himself. 

 

The scars, crinkly and warping, marr his entire left side. They curl around his calf, around his ribs. He’s lucky he can even use that arm and hand. Up his neck, up to his ear where he’s missing a chunk of cartilage. A vicious patch on his cheek, as if he’s been kissed. 

 

Connor can barely recognize himself. Maybe that’s normal, for a dead man. 

 

Most of his hair has grown back, but it’s shorter than it ever as Before. 

 

Before. With a capital B. 

 

That’s the way it’s going to be, from now on. 

 

Connor puts on layers and layers of clothes. He thanks Alex and Nicke for all their help, because his mother raised him right. He promises to stay in touch, and mostly means it. 

 

He walks away. 

 

.

 

He floats around the world, aimless, living out of motel rooms and off fake names. He takes on freelance jobs, though he makes sure they’re lowkey ones. Sometimes he helps one of the other guys land a blow against the organization. He kills people. He mostly stays in North and South America. He likes cooler places, where he can wear more layers, loop scarves around his ruined throat.

 

Time passes.

 

Connor finds himself going back to a few parts of Canada, again and again. 

 

He missed the mourning period. He’s glad that he did—it probably would have broken him, to see the both of them like that. But now it’s weird, watching them as if he had never been there.

 

Mitchy, continuing down this spy path, because he always believed in the good of this more than him and Dylan. Mitchy, excelling, growing, becoming the person that Connor could always see inside of the hyperactive, vibrating kid.

 

Connor trails two blocks behind Mitch when he goes on midday walks, watches from the supermarket across the street when he gets coffee with the Matthews kid. Watches little dark circles carve themselves under his eyes. 

 

Connor can’t find Dylan. No one can find Dylan. Dylan is so deep underground that not even Bettman can find him. 

 

Fuck, Connor misses Dylan.

 

Alex practically had to sit on him to stop Connor from calling Mitch, tearing the world down to find Dylan, after he woke up. He needed to to get the both of them  _ out,  _ to get them both safe, to get them all together again. 

 

Connor had come around in the end, though. 

 

It’s safer this way. To not dig Dylan out of hiding, to not expose Mitch to the organization’s cruelty. 

 

They already killed Connor. All he can do now is keep the two people who used to be most important to him safe. 

 

And time just keeps passing. 

 

.

 

Connor misses hugs. 

 

He misses hugs and shoulder-touches and hair tossels. He misses teasing. He misses birthday parties and 2 p.m. conversations. 

 

He misses people saying his name. 

.

 

He’s just finished helping the others on a months-long, deep strike on the organization, one that they actually felt and that actually rattled them, so when he gets a call from Nicke he assumes that’s what it’s about. 

 

“Where are you?” Is what Nicke says, in a strained, odd tone of voice. 

 

Connor is in Albany, and tells him so. 

 

“Okay, great, I need you to get to New York City,” says Nicke. “Someone will meet you there. There’s something you need to know.”

 

And then Nicke gives him the location and hangs up the phone, leaving Connor with muted panic rouring in his ears. 

 

The person who meets him in a dive bar in New York City is someone Connor has met before. Frizzy-haired and eternally exhausted-looking, the guy’s name is Phil and he’s the one who helped Connor re-find Mitch again. 

 

Phili had been pretty thoroughly chased out of the organization, but managed to keep a few contacts on the inside in Toronto. Seeing him stare at his hands, face grave, makes the pit of Connor’s stomach drop out. 

 

“What happened?” Connor asks, before he’s even sat down. 

 

Phil looks up at him, and—fuck, fuck, Connor is so sick of people looking at him like he’s the most tragic thing they’ve ever seen. 

 

“Kid,” Phil says, “maybe sit down?”

 

“No. I’m not gunna. Just tell me.” Connor swallowed. “I’m not a kid.”

 

Phil swore quietly. “I hate that I’m the one who has to tell you this. It’s 011, McDavid. It’s Marner.”

 

And maybe he says more than that, but Connor doesn’t hear. 

 

All he can think of is Mitch, Mitchy, giggling into his milk carton at lunch, Mitch elbowing an Xbox controller out of his hands, Marns in his dad’s tshirt and basketball shorts and socks while he unironically plays air guitar, Mitch tiny and 12 and puffing up his chest at some asshole, Mitchell Marner smiling and smiling and smiling. 

 

Everything Connor has done the past few years crumples to nothing around him, because he’d been doing it to keep that smile going. 

 

Connor McDavid drowns in failing the last thing he had to fail. 

 

.

 

He doesn’t know how he gets to Toronto, but he gets to Toronto. He stares up at a shithole apartment in Toronto, and walks in. He flashes his Good Canadian Boy smile, which he can still pull off with a scarf and some concealer, to the landlady, then climbs the stairs and picks the lock. His scars ache. 

 

It’s such a shitty apartment. 

 

It’s small and scuffed and the couch is a little broken. The TV is old and there are piles of DVDs everywhere. Two dishes sit in the drying rack, even after all this time. There’s a fish in a bowl on a low table. 

 

It’s everything Mitch would want. 

 

“Come on, Davo,” says Mitchy from the couch, even though he isn’t there. He looks just the same as the last time Connor saw him, bright and alive and  _ real _ . “You can even pick the movie this time. I promise I won’t whine about it. I’m just not feeling a rom-com tonight. Or an action flick. Actually, I was thinking, maybe we could watch—”

 

Connor takes his gun out of its holster. He only barely aims, then unloads the clip into the wall over the TV. He crosses the room in two steps and flips the couch over. He kicks the coffee table again and again until it breaks. He doesn’t scream and he doesn’t cry, because there’s nothing left in him to do it. 

 

Connor blinks. 

 

He hasn’t done any of that. He hasn’t moved from standing in the doorway. All he’s doing is staring at a picture taped up near the fishtank.

 

Connor recognizes it. He use to have a copy of the same one. 

 

Mitch is on the right, Dylan on the left, Connor right in the middle. They’re years younger, still in high school, all of them laughing at something or another. 

 

Dylan is smiling and Mitch is breathing and Connor isn’t ruined by fire. All Conner wants to do is reach through the picture, grab them all and shake them, tell them to get out before they start. That this was going to kill two of them.

 

“But we were gonna save the world, Davo,” says Mitchy from behind him. “We were gonna be the good guys.”

 

Connor doesn’t turn around, because he knows that no one will be there.

 

He feels something in him, already bent and damaged, finally snap. 

 

Connor needs to leave. He should have never come here in the first place. 

 

The picture peels off the wall easily enough, though. The tape is old. Connor knows he shouldn’t, but he can’t make himself leave it. He folds it in half and puts it in his wallet. 

 

The crease slashes a line through his own young, unscarred face. Splitting the dead man in half.

 

He feeds the fish on his way out. 

 

.

 

Anger is unfamiliar. After the explosion, he wasn’t angry; just numb. He’s not numb now. 

 

Anger is unfamiliar, but it is useful. It fills up all the places in him that are finally, after all these years, totally empty.

 

“I want to help more,” Connor says to Nicke over the phone.

 

Nicke says, “What?”

 

“I want to help more. I want to rip Bettman’s heart out myself. I’m good. Let me help.”

 

Nicke says, “Okay.”

 

For the next weeks, Connor saturates himself in blood. He’s going to tear these fuckers down. He’s going to make them sorry. He’s going to deal them a blow that they’ll never forget.    
  


That does happen, but it’s not Connor’s doing. Auston fucking Matthews beats him to it. 

 

Mitch is alive. It’s a miracle that Connor can’t let himself believe. 

 

He stays on mission.

 

.

 

It takes longer than it should for him to work up the nerve to track down Mitch and Matthews. Connor’s never liked the American midwest very much. 

 

He hangs back and just watches, the way he used to. Soaks in the fact that Mitch is alive, breathing, reasonably whole. He walks next to Matthews, taking quietly, sometimes almost laughing. Connor watches from across streets and stores, covered in hats and scarves and coats, hanging back as far as he’s able to make himself. 

 

They never see him. Obviously not. He was supposed to be the best, after all. 

 

Mitchy. Alive. What kind of world were they living in?

 

Matthews and Mitch are in the gardening center in a Walmart. They are smiling at each other and arguing about what mulch they should buy. Mitch is wearing a baseball cap, and he tips his head back and laughs. 

 

A thought enters his head, as soft and insidious as a flu virus: that everything wrong in his world, every piece of himself that’s been all bent out of shape, every physical and mental ache that he’s been carrying, would be fixed, if only he goes over there. He just needs to do is see Mitch Marner again. 

 

He can see it, suddenly, in his mind’s eye. He can see himself walking up to them from behind, here or in the parking lot or at their house. He would clear his throat, and Mitch would turn around. 

 

He would start crying, probably. He’d tear up and say Connor’s name, and it would sound so sweet to hear it again. Connor would start crying too.

 

There would be anger later, probably. But Mitchy never defaulted to anger. No, Mitchy would smile at him, the kind of smile that split his face open, and then throw him arms around him and press that smile into Connor’s neck. 

 

And Connor would hold him, hug him back, and say that he’s sorry, he’s sorry, he’s sorry. And all his scars melt away, and he never leaves again. 

 

Then, across the store, Matthews reaches over to— Connor doesn’t know, take his hand or clap his shoulder, and Mitch flinches back as if he’s expecting a blow, or expecting the hand Matthews put on him to burn. 

 

And Connor remembers that Mitch spent longer in the dark and in pain than Connor ever did, and that Connor never did anything to stop that, never did anything to get him out of there or the organization or stop him from joining in the first place. 

 

And that Mitch wouldn’t hug him, now. Maybe wouldn’t even smile anymore. He would pull away from Connor’s touch, pull away from Connor. 

 

And Connor deserves that. 

 

The scars wouldn’t melt away, anyway. They never will.  

 

He watches Matthews carefully withdraw his hand and wave off Mitch’s apologies. He watches them smile at each other, fragil and loving. 

 

He turns his back to them. 

 

The boy who used to be Connor McDavid walks away. 

 

.

 

.

 

.

 

_ (Then, maybe. Maybe. The future: _

 

_ Connor walks into the steril hotel room he’s been staying in, and finds Dylan already there.  _

 

_ And Dylan looks at him with an expression oddly torn between righteously pissed off and the kind of tenderness that people build forever on.  _

 

_ “Connor McDavid,” he says, “you fucking moron.” _

 

_ And Connor falls, the way he’s been falling since the explosion, except this time.  _

 

_ This time. _

 

_ Dylan catches him.) _

 

_ (And his scars don’t vanish, but maybe that’s just as well.) _

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah, this one kinda got away from me. 
> 
> Why does John Tavares make a one-senttence cameo? Where did implied-visually-impaired Sidney Crosby come from? Why does Phil Kessel show up?
> 
> ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
> 
> (Edit 7/1/18: I cameo-ed John Tavares in a fic with leafs players and two weeks later, look where we are. I’m an islanders fan. rip me) 
> 
> Hope you enjoyed.


End file.
